Giants rookie Ereck Flowers must bloom in a hurry

The Giants take offensive lineman Ereck Flowers in the first round and will need him to contribute heavily and immediately. (Evan Pinkus/AP)

Ereck Flowers was in the weight room that day in May when he heard the screams that changed his NFL career before it even started. He was there when Will Beatty, the Giants' starting left tackle, tore his pectoral muscle, an injury that will keep him out until late October, at least.

A few days later, offensive line coach Pat Flaherty approached Flowers, the Giants' left tackle of the future, and told him the future was suddenly, unexpectedly now.

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"All right," he told his coach. "I'm ready."

He better be, because nobody expected him to have to be ready this soon.

For all the worries facing the Giants this summer — from Jason Pierre-Paul's mysterious status to Victor Cruz's healing knee — one of the biggest, and certainly the most underrated, is about the man protecting Eli Manning's blind side. The Giants love Flowers' size (6-6, 329) and potential and when they drafted him ninth overall in May they figured he'd spend the next decade anchoring their offensive line.

But they also knew the 21-year-old came to them with technical flaws, and would likely benefit from a year on the right — and less pressure-filled — side. He may have been a top-10 pick, but he was far from a finished project.

Everyone knew getting him ready was going to take some time.

"It is going to take some development," Flaherty said. "We all know that because of the injury to (Beatty), his development has been escalated. I thought in a couple years he would be very good. Well, that 'couple years' now is September. So that's where that's at."

The question the Giants need to answer this summer is whether that timetable is even feasible. They need to see if the flaws in Flowers' game can be fixed in six short weeks. If not, the Giants will have problems because their rebuilt offensive line is suddenly looking dangerously thin again and they don't have many better options to fill Beatty's spot.

And that's not good, because almost all of their hopes for a revival season — for returning to the playoffs for the first time since 2011 and saving Tom Coughlin's job — revolve around what they believe will be one of the NFL's best offenses. The defense is questionable, especially with JPP perhaps out for much of the season. But the offense with a rejuvenated Manning and a presumably healthy Cruz, plus weapons like Odell Beckham and Shane Vereen, is expected to be dangerous.

At least it should be, as long as Manning doesn't spend most games running for his life.

So how ready is Flowers really to keep Manning protected? The Giants have trumpeted his feistiness more than his technical prowess. On draft day, Marc Ross, the Giants' VP of Player Evaluation, called Flowers "the nastiest guy, and you don't want to mess with him." GM Jerry Reese added, "This guy doesn't take any (garbage) from anybody."

"He's a scrapper too, man," Art Kehoe, Flowers' offensive line coach at the University of Miami, later told the Daily News. "He's an intense rascal. You know you're going to get a guy that's trying to kick your (butt) every play."

But what about those technical flaws? Kehoe said Flowers' technique is actually more "refined" than scouts generally say. Flowers, for his part, tried to tune out the noise about how he's a project who was drafted too high.

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"I really don't care," he said. "If you're not part of the organization, you're not my coach or in this locker room, I really don't listen. Unless my coach says something to do, that's all I'm worried about."

Flaherty has given Flowers a lot to do, even more since Beatty's injury, and the coach will surely give him even more during the next six weeks as he tries to get his project ready for opening night in Dallas. Flowers is saying all the right things, including, "I'm up for the challenge." And he knows how important it is that he's right.